Just Because
by Bimadabomi
Summary: She had never really known unconditional love until she knew Rory and Luke. LL emphasis, including a post ep for episode 4.02. [One shot]


Just Because 

I don't know _where_ in my head this came from. I'd always thought about the post 4.02 (The Lorelais' First Day at Yale) part, but the other stuff just kind of fell into place nicely around it. This includes spoilers for the season 5 finale toward the end. Even though it was over two months ago by now, still thought I'd put the warning there. Anything past the season 5 finale is speculation.

xxxxx

"Why won't you marry him, Lorelai?"

Lorelai rolled her eyes and crossed her arms across her chest before she glared at her mother. Sometimes she wished she could just run away, with her baby and all, and never have to come back to this stupid house. "Because I don't want to marry him, Mom!" she said, harsher than she had intended to.

"Well, you're having his baby," Emily spat out. "That's a pretty good reason to want to marry him."

Lorelai shrugged. "I'm only sixteen, Mom. I'm not ready to get _married_."

"Well you're not ready to have a baby either," Emily noted, "but you're doing that, aren't you?"

"It was an accident," Lorelai said coldly.

"I should hope so. No girl in her right mind should want to get pregnant at sixteen." Emily paused. "But the mistake has been made, and you should marry him. You have deal with the consequences."

"Getting pregnant was an accident," Lorelai repeated, trying to stay calm, which was always a task with her mother, not to mention the new pregnancy hormones she had to deal with, "but I still have control over making another mistake by not marrying Chris!"

"Lorelai…" Emily began.

"I don't love him, Mom! Not like you should love someone when you get married. I'm only sixteen. We're too young. We'll be miserable, and how would that good for me, or for Chris, or for the baby?"

"Young lady, sometimes you have to make sacrifices…"

"I know!" she shouted. "I know. I know _all_ about sacrifices, thanks to you and Dad. I don't think I've ever heard two people say the word 'sacrifices' as much as you and Dad have since I told you I was pregnant! I am making sacrifices," she declared. "I'm giving up a lot of things for this baby. But I don't see why I should have to marry Christopher just because."

"'Just because'?" Emily asked in shock. "It's not ' just because'! Do you think I want my daughter to get married at sixteen 'just because'? Most definitely not. This is not _just because_, this is _because_ you and Christopher are having a child together."

Lorelai groaned. "I don't want to talk about this anymore! I'm not marrying him."

"You're denying your child of a family. Of a mother and a father who are together."

"So already you're saying I'm a bad mother?" Lorelai spat. "Wonderful, thanks."

"You're making choices now that are going to affect the rest of your life," Emily explained. "Do you realize that, Lorelai? Do you want to be alone for all of your life?"

"I'm not going to be alone for my whole life just because I don't marry Christopher!" Lorelai shouted.

"How many men out there do you think want to marry someone who already has a child? Let alone a child she had as a teenager? Do you think most men want to become a father before the honeymoon is even over?"

"Well, if that's the case, then I don't want to be with those men anyway."

"You're being naïve," Emily told her.

"I'm not marrying Christopher at sixteen." She shook her head at her mother. "One day I'll find someone, Christopher, someone else, _whoever_, who will love me and love this baby, and who I will actually want to marry when I'm ready to get married. Remember _that _concept?"

Emily shrugged. "Fine. Have it your way. At least you won't be alone for those eighteen years before your child goes off to college."

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Lorelai called to Emily's back as she headed out the door.

xxxxx

She thanked Luke for the use of his truck and she began walking back towards her house. Luke was too good to her, she noted. Not only did he let her borrow his truck, he had loaded it up for her when she had much less time to get Rory's things packed than she had originally thought. He had made a trip to Yale _with_ her to drop off a load. He had let her keep the truck overnight so she could stay with Rory, and had only been slightly grumpy when she returned it.

She really had walked all over him the past few days, she realized, and it wasn't really fair. She wished for two things at times like this. First, that she could bake. Second, that Luke would actually like something she would bake. That would be the perfect thank you gift, just bake something up real quick as a thank you.

She'd get Luke something. Maybe another hat? No, that was too repetitive, that had been her last thank you gift to Luke. She'd think of something, she decided. She'd just think on it for a while.

She arrived home and fished out her keys, still thinking about Luke and what she could get him to thank him for putting up with her. She was so preoccupied that when she stepped into the living room, the realization that Rory was gone hit her full force. She was supposed to prepare for this mentally before she came inside, damnit.

She took a deep breath and looked around sadly. Had it just been yesterday morning that she and Rory had been in the living room, her snapping pictures of Rory with her trash bags full of belongings? It seemed like years ago to her. She sighed and willed herself to suck it up—she was not going to get all emotional about this. Rory was at Yale, in New Haven. Not at Harvard, in Boston. She decided to be thankful for that, noting how ironic it was being that she had fought her parents so hard about Yale not too long ago. Maybe her mother had been right about the benefit of Yale being close to home.

She grimaced outwardly. Had she just thought that her mother might have been _right_ about something? That hadn't happened since she was four and her mother told her that the oven could get hot and she shouldn't touch it. (The oven did, Lorelai learned not long after, get very hot.)

She tossed her keys down on the table and threw her bag down on the couch. At least with Rory off at Yale, she could be a slob around the house. Rory hated it when she left objects carelessly strewn about, probably because of that time she had sat on a shoe and gotten a heel in a place she definitely didn't want one.

Lorelai decided a shower sounded completely appealing at the moment. The showers at the dorms at Yale weren't the best and she cringed for Rory, thinking about her having to suffer using those showers for four more years.

_Four years_, Lorelai heard the term repeat over and over in her head, bouncing from one side of her head to the other like a Pong ball. Rory would be at Yale, at college, away from her, for four years. Not to mention that after those four years, Lorelai had a sneaking suspicion that Rory wasn't going to return home to live in her bedroom and watch movies and eat pop-tarts for breakfast every day of the week.

Rory was gone. On her own, now and forever. She wouldn't be living at home again. Ever.

_Great job at not getting all emotional_, Lorelai scolded herself. She reminded herself that Rory would be back… on weekends and over holidays and in the summer. It wouldn't be a complete and total break at first, she'd have time to adjust to this, days of Rory waking up and looking for something edible, nights of watching movies and falling asleep on the couch. She would just pretend that Rory was at Lane's every night. Or, like the summer before last, off in Washington with Paris. That was a plan. She was just way from home for a bit.

The house suddenly seemed big and empty, and Lorelai noted that she was alone. All alone in her house.

The words her mother had spoken to her years ago came back to her suddenly. "_At least you won't be alone for those eighteen years before your child goes off to college."_ Lorelai had to laugh bitterly at the irony of it. She had been so sure at sixteen that her mother was wrong (after all, she had been wrong about pretty much everything except for the oven) and that one day Lorelai would be swept off her feet by some man that loved her and her child and they would all live happily ever after. At sixteen she had even thought that one day she and Christopher would get married, just not at sixteen, and the three of them would be a family. However, when Christopher took off for California and left Lorelai with Rory, taking her 'I don't want to marry you' as 'Sure, you're off the hook with this whole kid thing,' she had started to get skeptical about that. And even then, she was sure there was _someone_ and that her mother would never be right about Lorelai being all alone once her kid went off to college.

And, here she was, kid in college, standing alone in her home.

She hated it when her mother was right.

It wasn't like there was _no one_ who would have accepted Rory. There was Max, after all. He had been willing to marry her and he had adored Rory. The problem was, she hadn't been willing to marry him. And there were other guys, like Alex. Sure, she had never thought about _marrying_ Alex, but he had had no problem with Rory. And there were the other guys here and there that hadn't run screaming when she mentioned that she had a daughter, though she didn't find many of those until after age twenty-six, she recalled.

But still, despite all that, she was alone.

She shrugged and decided to go take her shower before she kept admitting that her mother had been right about other things besides the oven.

After her shower she spent the rest of the afternoon watching movies, successfully avoiding anything that had to do with mothers and daughters, when she heard a knock at her door. She frowned, glancing at her watch, seeing it was just after seven and she hadn't been expecting anyone. Had she? She wasn't always the most organized person, after all.

She got up, flipping off the TV before going to the door, and pulled the door open to reveal Luke who smiled at her almost shyly.

"Hey," she said, surprised, flashing him a smile of her own. "What's up?"

He held up the bags he had in his hand. "I, uh, just thought… you haven't eaten yet, have you? Dinner?"

She shook her head. "No, actually." She grinned at him. "Why? What do you have there?" she asked knowingly.

"Well, your dinner, apparently," he said, handing her a bag. "And your desert," he added, handing her another bag.

She raised her eyebrows and peeked into the desert bag. "Pie!" she squealed happily. "What kind is it?"

"Boysenberry."

She grinned. "That's my favorite."

He nodded at her. "I know."

"You want to come in?" she asked, stepping back to allow him to come inside if he wished to. "Or did you just want to try out your skills as a delivery guy, see if that's your true calling?"

He shook his head and stepped inside. "Definitely not my calling."

"Didn't think so." She paused, peeking into the other bag. "So, to what do I owe this special delivery, then?" she asked, closing the door behind him and heading to the kitchen with the food.

He shrugged, following her. "You know…"

She raised her eyebrows in amusement. "Actually, no. I'm not quite up to par with Miss Cleo yet, so…"

"I don't know. I guess I just thought…" he sighed. "You know, with Rory and everything-"

"That I forgot how to feed myself?"

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Her face softened, and she tilted her head to look at him. "That's very sweet of you, but yes, I'm okay. I'll be fine."

He nodded. "Okay… good."

She shook her head wistfully. "How do you do it, Luke?" she asked suddenly.

He frowned. "Do what?"

"You've done like, one hundred _million_ things for me already with this whole Rory-going-off-to-college thing, and I spend the whole time walking back here from the diner this morning thinking of what I could get you to thank you, and instead, I find you bringing _me_ things."

He shrugged. "You don't need to get me anything," he told her.

"Yes I do. I drove you crazy with everything with the truck and the mattress and now you're checking up on me and bringing me dinner, and, damnit, I don't know why the hell you're so patient with me."

"I don't know either," he admitted with a small smile, which caused her to chuckle, smiling slightly at him in return.

"Well, at least we're on the same page, then." She looked down at the bag on the table in front of her and sighed. "I miss her." She leaned against the chair that was directly in front of Luke, staring down at her shoes.

He nodded in understanding, jamming his hands in his pockets. "I know."

"I mean, it's dumb, it's only been a day. We're been apart longer than that before. She was gone for six weeks in Washington that one time, she's spent a lot of nights away from me, at Lane's house, at my parents' house, at the dance studio with Dean," she remembered somewhat bitterly, "But this is different, because I just know she's not coming home. I guess it's all psychosomatic."

"She _is_ coming home," he reminded her. "Christmas? Spring break? Summer?"

"Yeah, I know," she said softly, playing with hem of her shirt. "But it… it wasn't supposed to be like this, though, you know? I'm all alone here now. I have a whole house to myself. Who lives in a house all alone? You live alone, and you live in a tiny apartment, not a two-story house. You've got the right idea."

"Your house isn't that big," he justified. "It's not like you have five bedrooms no one is using."

"It's just that I always thought, you know, I'd get married, maybe have another kid, all _before_ Rory left home. Then when she left home, I'd be sad, sure, but I wouldn't be all alone, in a house all by myself."

She looked up at him and noticed that he seemed to be sad for her, and for some reason, that got her more upset—Luke, emotionless Luke, looked sad because _she _was sad.

"Everything will be fine, Lorelai," he said, and she nodded weakly.

"I guess. You know, I've never lived alone," she noted. "I lived with my parents, then I lived with Rory. _Now_ I live alone."

"Living alone has its perks," he explained, speaking from his experience. "No one moves the milk," he reminded her with a knowing smile.

She looked up at him and smiled, letting a slight giggle escape before wiping at her eyes, knowing there were tears threatening to spill. "Sorry. I don't mean to be going all Bruce Willis on _Friends_ on you."

He ignored the reference he didn't get and shrugged. "That's okay," he told her, even though he wasn't sure exactly what Bruce Willis had done on Friends and how it compared to her, but he assumed she was referring to her crying.

"Everything seems so dull now," she continued. "Wake up, get ready for work, come home, eat dinner, watch movies. All alone," she said, her voice cracking on the last part.

He felt his heart break for her just a little. It was rare that he ever saw her so vulnerable, and he had to admit, he didn't like it too much. "Hey, come here," he said, moving towards her and pulling her to him. She immediately let her arms wrap around him and rested her head on his shoulder.

"You never have to do the dinner part alone," he added. "You eat at the diner and I promise, you can bother me all you like."

She chuckled softly. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know it freaks you out when I cry."

He rubbed her back soothingly. "Only because I hate seeing you upset," he explained. Taking a moment to revel in the comfort of Luke's arms around her and his flannel against her cheek, she composed herself before pulling away and wiping away the remnants of her tears from her cheeks.

"I'm okay," she assured him.

He looked at her closely. "Really?"

She nodded. "Yeah." She smiled at him. "Thanks for everything. You're one hell of a friend." She looked away shyly before speaking again. "Probably my best." She looked back at him with a thankful smile.

"Anytime," he agreed. "You need anything?"

She shook her head. "No, no, I'm fine. That little vent helped a lot."

He nodded. "So, uh, I should probably get going then."

She nodded. "Right. Thanks for the food. And especially the pie."

"No problem." He headed back towards the living room.

"And thanks for… being you."

He nodded. "If you need anything…"

"I know. Thanks." She flashed him a smile before they said good night and he headed on his way. She would never stop being thankful for Luke. It was like he was her own personal guardian angel.

She laughed at that thought, knowing Luke would probably just love that she thought of him as any kind of angel, and she went to go eat—the pie first, of course.

xxxxx

Lorelai wiped her hands on her jeans after depositing the last box in Rory's car.

"Are you sure you have everything, Babe?" she asked.

Rory nodded. "Yep. I've got it all. Today was just a light load, I'm glad I moved most of my stuff earlier in the week. It'll be crazy there tomorrow… tomorrow is the freshmen orientation so they'll all be moving in."

Lorelai sighed. "I remember when you were a little freshman," she said, holding her hand over her heart as if it hurt her that Rory wasn't a little freshman anymore. "That seems like just yesterday. Remember that one girl? She kept flipping out about the mattress? What was her deal?"

Rory shook her head in amusement, but defended the girl. "That was her job. That'll be my job too, come tomorrow," she reminded Lorelai.

"Ah, that's right," Lorelai noted, "You're in charge of the wee ones now that you're on the top."

Rory smiled and turned sentimental for a moment. "It really has gone by fast, hasn't it? It doesn't seem like I should already be in my last year of college."

"Well, you are," Lorelai needlessly pointed out, and Rory shrugged, but was deterred from responding when Luke appeared in the doorway.

"Your oil is taken care of," he informed Rory with a nod.

She smiled at him thankfully. "Thanks, Luke. You really didn't have to do that, I could have taken it and gotten it done."

"Well, why pay for something you can get free?" he reasoned with a shrug of his shoulders.

Lorelai chuckled to herself, sneaking an arm around Luke's waist. "That's been my motto at the diner for _years_."

"No kidding," he said flatly, and Rory couldn't help but laugh.

"Are you _sure_ you have everything?" Lorelai repeated again, ignoring Luke's sarcasm and Rory's encouraging giggles. "I really feel like the whole moving process was way too easy this year."

"That's because thanks to Luke and his truck, we could get more things moved in fewer trips."

"He's so handy to have around," Lorelai agreed.

"Sure is. You chose good," Rory added with a wink. She glanced at her watch. "Oh, wow. I better get going, Paris probably has the place decorated by now."

Lorelai nodded. "Go stake your claim!"

Rory chuckled and gave her mother a hug, kissing her on the cheek. "I'll see you soon," she assured her.

"You better. Just because we don't live in the same house anymore doesn't mean that you can skip out on visiting me and Luke."

"Are you kidding? The fact that you live here in this huge, gorgeous house now is only _more_ incentive for me to come and visit."

Lorelai pretended to be offended. "What? Visiting your mother and stepfather wasn't enough incentive?"

Rory rolled her eyes. "You know what I meant." She then moved to Luke and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek as well. "Good luck with this one," she said, nodding her head towards her mother.

"I'll need it," Luke agreed, and before Lorelai could respond, Rory shot her an evil smile and disappeared out the door.

She lightly smacked Luke on the chest. "You and your stepdaughter are getting a _little_ too good at the gang-up-on-Lorelai thing for my liking." Luke chuckled and Lorelai sighed. "I can't believe this is her last year at Yale."

"Yeah," he agreed, "Me either." They moved to the doorway to watch Rory as she got in her car, giving them a wave.

"It seems like just yesterday that she moved into that first dorm and was homesick two minutes after I left. Well, after _we_ left," she corrected, gesturing between her and Luke. She shrugged and added playfully, "Now look, not only doesn't she think twice about leaving me, she also insults me before she goes."

Luke chuckled and moved to shut the front door once they saw Rory drive off safely. "She's must be relieved, though, that all that studying and paper writing and class taking is coming to an end and she can finally do what she really wants to do."

"Yeah," Lorelai nodded. "Me on the other hand, totally freaked out about that. Who knows where she'll be moving off to _next_ year at this time? New York? Boston? Los Angeles? Europe?"

"Hartford?" Luke reminded her of a closer possibility.

"I don't want to be too optimistic," she explained.

"Ah," Luke nodded. "Well, just be glad that wherever she goes, you'll still talk to her all the time. There are phones and e-mail and lots of things to make it easier."

"And Lukes…" she added.

"What?" he questioned with a frown.

"Yes, when she leaves, I miss her, and it will _especially_ kill me if she moves across the country or even out of the state, but," she paused, gathering her thoughts, "you're still here with me. That makes it easier, too. I'm not left, you know…" she looked up into his eyes, "all alone," she finished softly, knowingly.

He nodded, remembering the night that he had come by to see Lorelai after Rory had first moved into her first dorm at Yale. "No, you're not," he agreed. "And you never will be left all alone in this house."

She grinned at him. "Good to know." He smiled at her softly, squeezing her shoulder, before heading into the kitchen.

She remembered the night she and Luke had gotten engaged and recalled his rant in the diner, remembering how it had suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks. Yes, Luke had always been there for Rory, but it had become crystal clear that night that Luke would do _anything _for Rory. She was pretty sure that he hadn't been joking about kidnapping her and forcing her to go to classes. He knew it was a bit problematic, she had remembered, but if he could have figured out a way to do it he probably would have. He completely loved Rory as if she was his own daughter.

Well, if that's the case, then I don't want to be with those men anyway.

Her words from sixteen had never quite vanished from her mind, and the night she and Luke got engaged, they had seemed oddly appropriate to be thinking about. Her mother had called her naïve, and maybe she had been. Maybe she just got lucky with Luke. But even though it took almost twenty-one years after Rory's birth to find that person who she would _want _to be with, who would love her and love her daughter as well, she had.

Months after the engagement Luke and Rory had conspired together to plan a surprise birthday party for Lorelai. Sookie had explained to Lorelai that it had been Luke's suggestion, and Rory had excitedly agreed to it, doing most of the planning, because, well, Luke was Luke.

When Luke got Lorelai to the party and she had been so surprised that she hadn't even had anything to say, everyone knew the surprise had been a success. Rory had walked up to her mother, clearly proud that they had managed to stun her into silence, and she had even added that she had thought she would have broken Luke and he'd have given the surprise away.

It was later the night of her party when Lorelai was praising Sookie on the amazing cake she had baked (and, Sookie explained, she had made seven sample cakes that Luke refused to taste, so Rory had to be the one and only judge on which cake to choose) when Lorelai had noticed Luke and Rory over Sookie's shoulder. They had been standing near the food table, Rory laughing and Luke shaking his head in amusement. She couldn't believe how much she loved those two people, and as she watched them stand there, together, talking and laughing, it had made her feel like her heart was going to explode. Cliché, she had thought, but true.

Then a moment later Rory had nudged Luke and gestured over towards someone and this time Luke couldn't help but let out a laugh at whatever spectacle someone was making of him or herself. Rory giggled along with him, and they exchanged a knowing look.

There they were, her daughter and her fiancé, the two people she loved more than anything in this world, and the only two people that she knew loved her unconditionally. She had never really known unconditional love until she knew Rory and Luke, she had realized some time ago. Rory, her kid, who would love her no matter what she did and would always hold her in some kind of awe no matter how old she got, and Luke, who had always loved her and would always love her no matter what she did, when he wasn't even required to.

That's why there had been something about that scene, watching Rory and Luke talk and laugh and bond, which was like the last piece of the puzzle fitting perfectly. Lorelai had always known that Rory loved Luke. When Rory was eleven and they had first met Luke, she talked about him for days, saying he was funny even though he was grumpy. She had also always known that Luke adored Rory and would do anything for her—he certainly had always cared more about Rory than his had himself. She had always known all these things, but as she stood there, she realized just how incredibly important two most important people in her life also were to each other. Luke didn't just love Rory because Lorelai did. Rory didn't just love Luke because Lorelai did. They loved each other simply because. _Just because_, she noted.

Like the excitement of her two best friends when she was in third grade becoming best friends with each other also, allowing the three of them to all be best friends.

Only, she remembered thinking, this didn't mean they had all become best friends like in third grade. This meant they had all become… a family.

She was jerked back to the present when she heard Luke drop something in the kitchen. Rory was off for another year at Yale, and, she noticed, she didn't have that horrible feeling in her gut. She knew that she would miss Rory, but she didn't feel that horrible emptiness that she had felt before when Rory had left for Yale in years past, leaving her all alone.

Because she wasn't all alone anymore, like her mother had insisted she always would be. She had Luke.

_You don't know what you're talking about!_ Lorelai remembered screaming at her mother when she was merely sixteen and a little over four months pregnant with Rory.

She smiled to herself, secure in the knowledge that her mother hadn't been right after all.

Except for that time about the oven.


End file.
